All your partners are having arguments about the pricing strategy for your new retail business which is about opening a jewellery shop at Gold City in Manama. Sara, who is your first partner, is insisting to go for Everyday Low Pricing (Customary Pricing Concept). Your second partner, Muneera, believes that a one- price policy is the best choice. However, Zainab who is your third partner feels Leader Pricing is the best concept to follow. Zahra, your fourth partner, does not mind going for Price Lining while Noor, the fifth partner, is disagreeing on all of the above decisions. She claims that she has a good number of years in the retail sector. Moreover, she highly believes that Flexible Pricing is the best option for this kind of business. Since you are the most experienced and highly educated person amongst your partners, it is obvious that your choice is going to be the best fit concept for this kind of business. It is definitely going to be one of the above stated pricing concepts. Hence, you have decided to call all your partners again for an urgent meeting to cover the following: 1. You first need to educate them and make them aware about the checklist of selected decisions for the pricing strategy implementation. (5 marks) 2. You need to briefly describe all the five stated pricing concepts: (Everyday Low Pricing (Customary Pricing Concept), One-Price Policy, Leader Pricing, Price Lining, and Flexible Pricing). (5 marks) 3. You need to clearly identify your choice of the best pricing concept amongst all the five stated pricing concepts. Try to convince them why you are only agreeing with one of the above partners and why your choice is far better than other concepts, especially for the business that you are intending to run. You need to convince four of your partners that their choices are not the best for this business. (5 marks) The battle of the brands exists when the three brand makers fight with each other for more space and control at retail stores. You, as the general manager of LULU hypermarket - Bahrain, are asked by the top management to explain what kind of brands your stores should follow when you are preparing your merchandise plan. Your stores are well-known to the public and scattered throughout the Arabian Gulf States, including Bahrain. They contain a variety of products, such as general grocery, fresh food, electronics, mobiles, home-living etc. You need to: 1. Explain (define and describe briefly) the three known types of brands that can be available for and adopted by any retail business when preparing for its merchandise plan. (5 marks) 2. Justify what would be the most suitable brand type(s) for your nature of business, especially when you are preparing the merchandise plan. Would you go for one type of brand or a mix of the three brands that your store should follow in regards the product categories stated above? Your justifications should cover the pros and cons of each type of the three brands that you have selected for the product categories of your stores. You should also justify why you did not choose other types of brands for your stores merchandise plan. (10 marks) After being a successful retail store manager in LC Waikiki - Seef Mall. The top management has asked you to manage both the store that is located at Seef Mall and the new Waikiki store located in the Avenues to ensure the smoothness of the store's operations of both locations. Since you are in the apparel (clothing) retail business, you are asked to ensure an efficient and effective implementation of the policies and tasks that satisfy your customers, employees, and management. You know very well that being given two big stores to manage, there are some operational decisions that you are expected to understand, such as how your staff can be best matched to customer traffic flows and using your best decision to maximise the personnel utilizations at both stores. Hence, you need to explain to your top management the following: a. The importance of having efficient utilization of retail personnel - You need to identify three main reasons only. (3 marks) b. The relationship among job standardization, cross-training and workload forecasting of both shops, and under what conditions should cross-training be used for both shops. (7 marks)